Hump Day Report: Day of Deliverance

ALOHA, ALL!! Wednesday we celebrate Independence Day. No, it’s not “July Fourth” it’s Independence Day. July fourth is just a date, one day out of 365 in a year. Nothing special. Independence Day is a big deal. Following is one of the best overviews of Independence Day that I’ve seen. No wonder it’s from Ronald Reagan. (My only beef with Reagan is he calls it the Fourth of July. Oh well….I guess no one’s perfect.) As you read this, understand what our Founding Fathers sacrificed to start this nation. Then ask yourself if you’re willing to do a comparatively minimal amount to save this country. (Skaka to Brett)

What July Fourth Means to Me

by President Ronald Reagan, July 1981

For one who was born and grew up in the small towns of the Midwest, there is a special kind of nostalgia about the Fourth of July.

I remember it as a day almost as long-anticipated as Christmas. This was helped along by the appearance in store windows of all kinds of fireworks and colorful posters advertising them with vivid pictures.

No later than the third of July – sometimes earlier – Dad would bring home what he felt he could afford to see go up in smoke and flame. We’d count and recount the number of firecrackers, display pieces and other things and go to bed determined to be up with the sun so as to offer the first, thunderous notice of the Fourth of July.

I’m afraid we didn’t give too much thought to the meaning of the day. And, yes, there were tragic accidents to mar it, resulting from careless handling of the fireworks. I’m sure we’re better off today with fireworks largely handled by professionals. Yet there was a thrill never to be forgotten in seeing a tin can blown 30 feet in the air by a giant “cracker” – giant meaning it was about 4 inches long.

But enough of nostalgia. Somewhere in our growing up we began to be aware of the meaning of days and with that awareness came the birth of patriotism. July Fourth is the birthday of our nation. I believed as a boy, and believe even more today, that it is the birthday of the greatest nation on earth.

There is a legend about the day of our nation’s birth in the little hall in Philadelphia, a day on which debate had raged for hours. The men gathered there were honorable men hard-pressed by a king who had flouted the very laws they were willing to obey. Even so, to sign the Declaration of Independence was such an irretrievable act that the walls resounded with the words “treason, the gallows, the headsman’s axe,” and the issue remained in doubt.

The legend says that at that point a man rose and spoke. He is described as not a young man, but one who had to summon all his energy for an impassioned plea. He cited the grievances that had brought them to this moment and finally, his voice falling, he said, “They may turn every tree into a gallows, every hole into a grave, and yet the words of that parchment can never die. To the mechanic in the workshop, they will speak hope; to the slave in the mines, freedom. Sign that parchment. Sign if the next moment the noose is around your neck, for that parchment will be the textbook of freedom, the Bible of the rights of man forever.”

He fell back exhausted. The 56 delegates, swept up by his eloquence, rushed forward and signed that document destined to be as immortal as a work of man can be. When they turned to thank him for his timely oratory, he was not to be found, nor could any be found who knew who he was or how he had come in or gone out through the locked and guarded doors.

Well, that is the legend. But we do know for certain that 56 men, a little band so unique we have never seen their like since, had pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. Some gave their lives in the war that followed, most gave their fortunes, and all preserved their sacred honor.

What manner of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists, 11 were merchants and tradesmen, and nine were farmers. They were soft-spoken men of means and education; they were not an unwashed rabble. They had achieved security but valued freedom more. Their stories have not been told nearly enough.

John Hart was driven from the side of his desperately ill wife. For more than a year he lived in the forest and in caves before he returned to find his wife dead, his children vanished, his property destroyed. He died of exhaustion and a broken heart.

Carter Braxton of Virginia lost all his ships, sold his home to pay his debts, and died in rags. And so it was with Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Rutledge, Morris, Livingston and Middleton.

Nelson personally urged Washington to fire on his home and destroy it when it became the headquarters for General Cornwallis. Nelson died bankrupt.

But they sired a nation that grew from sea to shining sea. Five million farms, quiet villages, cities that never sleep, 3 million square miles of forest, field, mountain and desert, 227 million people with a pedigree that includes the bloodlines of all the world.

In recent years, however, I’ve come to think of that day as more than just the birthday of a nation. It also commemorates the only true philosophical revolution in all history.

Oh, there have been revolutions before and since ours. But those revolutions simply exchanged one set of rules for another. Ours was a revolution that changed the very concept of government.

Let the Fourth of July always be a reminder that here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights; that government is only a convenience created and managed by the people, with no powers of its own except those voluntarily granted to it by the people.

We sometimes forget that great truth, and we never should.

Happy Fourth of July.

Ronald Reagan, President of the United States

Final Thought: “The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever.”

–John Adams wrote this in a letter to his wife, Abigail, on July 3, 1776.

7 responses to “Hump Day Report: Day of Deliverance”

Although born an American citizen (in Australia), I still have that immigrant tingle of knowing how fortunate I was to have made it to these shores. And the most pride that ever wells up in me is when I think how lucky I was to live in the era of Reagan.

Shortly after the Soviet Union fell in the early 1990’s (it took them until 1993 to vacate places like the Baltics, even East Germany) I traveled across the Iron Curtain. Poland, Czeckoslovakia, East Germany. Clinton had just taken office. So one would think he would have been all the rage. I am at the central marketplace in Krackow, Poland, buying souveniers. Those little Ukranian-type dolls. They have Gorbachev. But the biggest seller the shopkeeper tells me is Reagan. I ask him, ‘why no Clinton?’ He says, ‘Reagan make us free. We love Reagan.’ I wiped a small tear from my eye, and bought 10 of the dolls!

Yes he did, NEO. It’s interesting living in Hawaii now. Growing up in Ohio, Independence Day was huge. There were parades in every little suburb and fireworks displays everywhere. Leading up to the holiday, you could find all kinds of flags and red white and blue decorations in every store….drug store, grocery store, department store. Not so here in “paradise.” Yesterday, I tried desperately to find some decorations for a float in tomorrow’s Kailua parade (really the only one of any significance here on Oahu tomorrow). Slim pickings. At one hardware store – that had advertised earlier in the week about all their “Fourth of July decorations” there was one small shelf with silly sunglasses and light-up necklaces. I finally ended up at the local party/craft store where I could at least find a couple of packages of flag bunting and red white and blue crepe paper. Sad. This is one day where I really wish I was back on the mainland, and I pity people in Hawaii who have no clue what they’re missing.

I hear you, It’s not the same here as it was in Indiana either, maybe to many recent immigrants, maybe something else. My favorite memory is marching in the HS band in the parade, only problem was that we were behind the Sheriff’s Posse. Of course the Parade was started by a KC-135 from Bunker Hill (now Grissom) AFB.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
The Declaration of Independence